Through the years, discussing new approaches to intermarried members of the Jewish community was considered the “third rail” of community discourse. With the Jewish community already comprising less than 3 percent of the total American population,...

We wonder what the American Family Association of Indiana thinks of Scientology.Not that you’d care, right? Well, a lawsuit in that state might get you interested pretty quickly.The suit was filed in federal court against Indiana State Trooper Brian...

The “genocide” claims hurled against Israel by Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat are obviously specious on any number of levels.  That Abbas, Palestinian Authority President, and Erekat, PA chief negotiator, have chosen this particular...

A couple years ago we and our Can We Talk? partners, the Jewish Community Center and Jewish Community Relations Council, devoted an installment of the program to the question of how we as a Jewish community can constructively talk about Israel.As Jews...

Secretary of State John Kerry over the weekend assembled an impressive array of allies willing to take part in what President Barack Obama’s administration is now calling its “war” on the ultraviolent Islamist group ISIS. In addition to such NATO...

The relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is becoming the diplomatic equivalent of the on-again-off-again, tough love union of the late Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. In what might become the seventh official “break-up” of...

Our beloved Israel still hasn’t emerged from its seemingly perpetual public relations quagmire.After the Israeli Defense Forces succeeded admirably in defending the country during Operation Protective Edge, it looked like the world was coming around...

Congratulations to Hamas, which this week achieved a result almost unheard of in recent media history — getting the Wall Street Journal and New York Times to cover a story about Gaza in almost identical ways.Within a day of hollowly denouncing the beheading...

It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and furySignifying nothing.— Macbeth, Act V, Scene VThe metropolitan St. Louis region, covering all or part of 16 counties and the City of St. Louis, sprawls over about 9,000 square miles.If you can believe...

“Poverty is in the community, guns are in, drugs are in, jobs are out. Banks are bailed out without meaningful community reinvestment. Too many people have no stake in the culture.”That’s a quote from the Rev. Jesse Jackson that appeared in a story...

Does the world care about religious persecution? Sometimes we wonder.While much of the attention of the world’s media has been riveted to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza, the self-designated Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) has renewed...

Everyone wants an easy narrative to the Israel-Gaza conflict, one that will provide context from the past to explain the present and predict the future.Dream on.What we can offer instead is a clear, unequivocal position about what we think Israel should...